RIP Malcolm F

I was very saddened to hear that Malcolm F had passed away at the weekend. I had known Malcolm since the early 1980's, he used to live, I believe, at Reydon and then moved to the Saints near Halesworth, Suffolk. Often, I would quite literally, bump into Malcolm whilst birding around Southwold, Benacre or Minsmere. Malcolm was an excellent birder, finding many rare birds, including a Serin at Southwold. Above all, I remember Malcolm's cheerfulness and exuberance, despite occasional bouts of ill health. Malcolm was very keen to get to a bird and wouldn't allow any vegetation to stand in his way. He was well liked and was a very sociable man and it was always good to have a chat with him and share in his extensive ornithological knowledge. Looking back at my blog, it was Malcolm who advised me to look at Sizewell for the King Eider on Nov 15th 2010 and due to his excellent advice, I was able to add a very smart male King Eider onto my Birthday list. More recently, Malcolm and I had shared an incredible experience of watching an Osprey which fished on Blythburgh estuary (8 Sept 2013), it was Malcolm that put me onto a Glow Worm larvae wriggling across the path ahead of us. In more recent years, Malcolm had also embraced social media particularly Twitter. He described himself on there as "an old birdwatcher in the Saints, a rural area of Suffolk, North East of Halesworth." I used to look forward to his tweets about him seeing Turtle Doves in his garden. Something we would chat about when I saw him. On Twitter, he followed 74 people (including my tweets) and I was 1 of his 75 followers. He will be very sadly missed by all his birding friends and my thoughts go out to his family and friends. RIP Malcolm.